Introduction

There is a significant emphasis these days on getting
the Voluntary Sector more fully integrated into the
mainstream. The government presents it as a way of
recognising the contribution made by the Voluntary
Sector, and the importance of the work they do.
The Voluntary Sector often sees it as a way for the
Government to get work done more cheaply.

Service Delivery - the Way Forward?

The Big Plan is for the Voluntary Sector to get less money
in grants, and more through contracts for the services they
provide. Is this a way for our projects to become, in the
jargon, sustainable?

Limitations

For some parts of the Voluntary Sector, it will probably
work. Some parts have been doing it for years already. But
there are some fairly obvious limitations. As a brief summary,
they are as follows.

You must be doing something the Government wants to
fund.

You must be big enough to be able to bid for the
contract.

You must be already delivering the key elements of
your service through staff, not volunteers.

You must want to be identified as part of the 'system'
- the establishment, or however you care to phrase it.

You must be willing for your priorities to be set aside
for the Government's (ever changing) priorities.

You will gather that I have serious
doubts about how far service delivery is compatible with the
Voluntary Sector's usual ethos.

Even where the Government's current priorities are in line
with those of a Voluntary Sector organisation, there is a
serious risk that doing the work as a delivered service is
the first step in a massive mission creep, a major shift in
your organisation's values.

Being Paid to Care

From a functional perspective, it makes sense to get paid to
do something you would have done anyway. You want to help people?
Why not take the Government's money to help you do it more? But
from a moral and a human perspective, it is not the same at all.
You may sleep with someone and receive gifts from them because
you love them. But if you sleep with someone in order to get the
gifts, you are no more than a prostitute. And if you claim to love them
but negotiate the gift up front, you have to recognise the possibility
that your actions may be speaking louder than your words.

I am not saying that the Voluntary Sector should not become
engaged in service delivery. I am saying that it is not always
possible and even when it is possible, it is not always right. In
addition, it may be possible but not helpful for a charity to go down
this route - the money may affect your reputation, tie you up in
red tape, and distract you from achieving your main purpose.

And you have to recognise that taking money so that you will deliver
a service changes the nature of the service, however pure your motives.

Imposing Solutions

The other major flaw in the current approach is that organisations
are given contracts which specify what is to be achieved with the
money. It's an obvious point. But people often fail to think through
the implications of this approach.

At a human level, the introduction of targets reverses the original
relationship. At present, if a homeless person walks though our door, my
role is to help that person. If we have a set of targets to achieve,
when a homeless person walks through the door, their role is to help me
achieve my targets.

It's the old joke of the Boy Scout helping the old lady across the
road - whether she wants to cross the road or not. The Boy Scout is only
doing what is expected of him. As a joke, it works - we can laugh at the
misguided enthusiasm of youth. But this is exactly what is happening in
funded projects across the country every day - and we never stop to look
at the price paid by the old lady who is the victim of this assistance.

What right does anyone have to decide what will constitute success
for another human being?

Of course, we need specialist services with objectives and performance
targets and all the rest. They have a specific job to do, and they
should do it to the best of their ability.

But there is a massive difference between offering to help someone and
offering to do a specific job for them. Genuine help requires a long
term commitment to the person; a job simply needs to be done. The
statutory sector is great at getting jobs done, but this needs to be
balanced by others who are less concerned about the jobs and the targets
and more concerned about the people these jobs are being done for. And
this is where the Voluntary Sector tends to shine.

Getting jobs done is vitally important. Caring for people is vitally
important. I simply ask that we don't confuse the two. If someone offers
to paint my fence, that is fine. It is either a job I want done, or not.
And if it is a job I want done, then the offer is helpful. But if they
knock on my door and offer to help me, I will be frustrated to discover
at the end of a lengthy conversation that all they can offer is to
paint my fence because they have a contract to paint 50% of the
fences in my neighbourhood.

Your job, your service may be exactly what I need. But please don't
assume that because you are offering it, I need it. And this applies to
drug treatment and employment advice just as much as it does to fence
painting.

We need services which do jobs and achieve targets. But we also need
services which put people first. You can't do both. And, in the
current climate, you can only get funded to do jobs.

The first response to this issue tends to be along these lines: "Yes,
there can be problems with imposing targets, but it is all a question of
imposing the correct targets. Get the targets right and the system
works." This misses the point. Any target will be right for some people,
and wrong for others. And even if it is right, the timing may not be
right.

The second response then follows: "Yes, but the target is only the
end goal. We can be flexible about how people are helped to reach that
goal." However, flexibility in this context only means that you create
schemes with stepping-stone targets. The new targets suffer from
exactly the same problem as the original targets: they are only helpful
to some people some of the time. The goal may be to get people back to
work, and the stepping stone target may be to improve their health by
playing football. A homeless person walks through the door and my eyes
light up: I know what you need - you need to play some football. This
may sound more fun than 'you need a job' but it is just as manipulative,
and it still means we are using people to achieve our targets and ensure
the long term financial viability of our project. They are helping us,
not the other way round.

The other painfully obvious point to make about imposing targets
up front is this: it just does not work.

Firstly, people do not like being told what to do. Seeking to
impose targets on people is almost always counterproductive.

Secondly, it is irrelevant. They either want to do it, or they don't.
Either way, your target makes no difference.

Thirdly, it is an expression of a dangerous assuption: we, the
state, know what is best for you. We have targets for your life. We can
tell you how you should live your life.

And, lastly, it is ineffective. Lives change through relationships,
through inspiration, through hope, through dreams, through people
trusting you, and through having the freedom to explore. You simply
can't put any of that into a performance target.

Another Way

Trust Me

Do we then have to conclude that there is no way for the
Government and the Voluntary Sector to work together without
compromise?

To be honest, I don't see a way forward if the Government
insists on working on the basis of contracted services.

But that is not the only option. Just as people can enjoy a
relationship that is not based on payment, the Government and
Voluntary Sector can also enjoy a relationship that is based on
something a bit more reliable than contracts and service level
agreements. It can be based on trust.

So, what do we need for this alternate approach, to make it
work? Not much.

Firstly, you have to recognise that a relationship is just that - a
relationship. It takes time, and you have to work at it.

Secondly, as you get to know each other,
you will each discover the other's strengths and weaknesses, talents
and blind spots, likes and dislikes.

Thirdly, once you know and trust each other, you
can choose to provide finance on the basis of that trust.

Accountability and Blame

I'm not anti-Government. Many politicians and civil servants
are wonderful people who sincerely want to make the world a
better place. But they do not operate in a vacuum: they are
driven by political forces; their options are shaped by the
political realities of power and public opinion and media
deadlines.

The Government must be accountable to the electorate for the
way in which they spend public money. But too often the steps
that are taken on the grounds of accountability are actually
determined by a desire to avoid any possibility of blame.

There used to be a saying in the computer industry: nobody
ever got sacked for buying IBM. Okay, things have changed, but
the principle still holds. If you make the safe choice and
things go pear-shaped, you will be fine: you acted prudently,
and nobody could have foreseen the problems. If you avoid the
safe option and things go belly-up, it all comes back to you:
you were clearly negligent for taking such a risk.

The Safe Option?

Contracting-out services always seems to be the safe option. You
say what you want done, and they say they can do it. If it
gets done, you bask in the success; if it fails, you blame
the contractors. They promised; they gave evidence to justify
your belief that they were capable of it; but in the end, they
just couldn't deliver. How could you have known?

But every child knows: the promise of an ice-cream is not
the same as an ice-cream. And a contract is only a promise,
no matter how many words are used, and no matter how many
pieces of paper are stapled together. A contract to help people
does not ensure that anybody will get helped. It simply ensures
that, if they are not helped, you won't get the blame. Contracts
don't help the needy - they protect the powerful.

To look at it another way: if you want a good meal, which is
better? Would you prefer to sign a contract with someone who wants to be paid,
and who specifies the ingredients and quantities up front
to make sure the meal can be delivered within the agreed budget?
Or would you prefer to give the money to someone who loves cooking, and tell
them to see what they can do?

In each case, you can account for the money you spent. In each
case, you can justify what you spent and why. If you go for the
contract, you will probably get what you specified, but you may
discover that it wasn't what you wanted after all. If you
go for the gift to the person who loves cooking, you may be
surprised. It may not be what you expected, but you are far more
likely to be delighted. The contract is not, after all, the
safe option - not if you really care about food.

A person aiming to fulfil a contract will aim to meet their
contractual obligations, and no more. A person working for love
will will aim to do the very best with everything at their
disposal.

How it can Work

CCM as an Example

How might this work out?

As one part of our work, in the year to February 2008, Crisis Centre
Ministries has enabled some 35 people to access drug treatment
services. This is helping the Government achieve their targets.
We could be offered money to deliver this same service next year.
But we could not accept it.

Next year, we might help twice that number into treatment.
Or we might help half the number. It depends on the people who
come to us, what their needs are, and what help they are ready
and able to accept. Our work is not to achieve arbitrary
targets - our work is to help people. Pushing someone into rehab
in order to achieve a target doesn't help society, it doesn't help
the individual, and it does nothing for our reputation.

Service delivery is always based on targets, and targets are
always arbitrary. Circumstances change: a challenging target may
turn out to be a piece of cake, and what was intended to be an
easy target may turn out to be impossible. We cannot commit to
achieving externally imposed targets without abandoning the
fundamental ethos of the organisation.

But we do have a track record. We have been operating for 23
years, 21 of them from the same building. You can look at what
we have achieved over the years. Was it worth doing? Absolutely.
Was it cost-effective? You bet it was - most of the work is done
by volunteers, absolutely free. And the quality of their work is
incredible. Not because they are aiming for targets, but because
they care, and they want to make a difference to the people they
meet.

What we have done so far was worth doing. We intend to keep
going. If you give us some money, we will be able to do more of it.
How much more, we can't say. But we are motivated to use it as wisely
as possible, because we want to make a difference. And next year,
or in six months time, you can look at what we have done, and ask
if it was worth doing. You can ask if it was cost-effective. And,
if it was, you might want to give us some money the next year.

When I say I want a relationship based on trust, I don't mean
blind faith. I am not saying: just give us your money, cross your
fingers, walk away and hope that we will do something worthwhile
with it. What I am saying is that you can examine our
track record, our finances, our procedures, our culture, our values.
You can examine what we have done, and how we have done it.
If you like what you see, why not trust us to keep doing it, with
all the resources at our disposal?

We can't put a price on helping people - not if that price
involves negotiating up front how much we require to be paid in
order to provide that help. But we can count how much it actually
did cost - in financial terms, at least - to do what we could do for
the people we did help.

The truth of that matter is that we can work with many of our clients
because we are not given money to achieve targets. They know we
are on their side, wanting the best for them. They trust us.
And because they trust us, we can help. Going down the route
of service delivery would destroy that culture and eventually
the trust would ebb away.

But if we were to receive funding from the Government, or
anyone else, on the basis that we are trusted to do a good job -
that would not undermine our ethos, values or culture in any way.
It would only say that the big players have learned to trust us and
to value what we do - just as homeless and vulnerable people
have been doing for years.

Service Delivery After All?

They say there is more than one way to skin a cat. Never
tried it myself, but there are some things you just have to
take on trust.

I've just been talking about the error of trying to go down a
'Service Delivery' route for much of the Voluntary Sector.
But perhaps there is more than one way to approach this
problem. Maybe Service Delivery is exactly what we should be
doing. Perhaps we need to reclaim the term.

After all, when the Government talks about Service Delivery,
what it really means is contract delivery. Contracts with
specified outcomes, targets and service level agreements.

So let us be clear about this: what we do through CCM, and
through much of the Voluntary Sector cannot be done as a
contract. You can either put the individual first or you can
work towards a set of pre-specified objectives. You cannot
do both. Of course, sometimes they coincide. But, when they
do coincide, you don't need the detailed list of objectives:
all you need to do is to care for the individual.

To put it another way: when the caring and the contract agree,
you don't need a contract to tell you what to do. And when they
disagree, you are forced to choose: you can either do what is right
for the individual, or what is right according to the contract.
You can't do both, and you loose either way.

It is completely fair to describe what we do as providing
- delivering! - a service. We are serving our clients. We are
finding out what they want, what they would appreciate, what
they want to see happen, and seeking to help them
move forward in those ways.

Of course, we do this from within the framework of our own
values, so we don't do everything our clients want or ask for:
if they want money for their next fix, we don't give it to
them. (We don't give money, full stop - but that's getting into
too much detail.) But we refuse to give the money because we
believe that giving it would not be in their best interests:
we are still serving them, still seeking to help, still working
in their best interests. It is an attempt to provide a genuine
service, not a giving-up-and-following-the-rules lip service.

So we can say loud and clear: we believe in service delivery.
It's what we are all about. What we don't believe in is
reducing service, love, care and human interaction down to a
contract that says what we must do and how we must do it.

If you believe that contracts are appropriate in our line
of work, I've got a great idea for you. Next time you
start a love affair, why not write a contract to cover it?
What could possibly be better? That way, you and
your new partner will each know what you can expect from the
other. A well-written contract will enable you to avoid many
misunderstandings and the disappointment
of unrealistic expectations. If you have a service level agreement,
you will know how often roses or chocolates are expected, so
you won't let each other down.

Alternatively, you might decide that human relationships cannot
be adequately described through a contract. Clear expectations matter,
but flexibility and judgement are also important.
Perhaps the important thing about a relationship is that it
grows and develops with time, in unexpected ways.

Perhaps we need to be reminded that people are people, and not
problems to be solved. Contracts are great. I mean that. They are really
important when I want my rubbish to be collected each week,
or my car to be serviced to agreed standards. However, when it
comes to serving - when we are seeking to help other human beings
- contracts might be helpful to clarify a few technical details,
but they cannot ever adequately describe what we need to do or
how we need to do it.

Honesty

Perhaps it would be easier to be transparent and accountable and
all those other good things, if only the application forms did not
require us to lie. Well, maybe not all - but most.

It's not only the application forms - it's also the progress reports
and all the 'what did you do with our money?' forms. They also beg
us to lie.

Most application forms want to know what the money will enable us
to do, and what difference this will make to our clients. The honest
answers are "nothing" and "I don't know" - but you can't say that.

The assumption behind most application forms is that we need this
money so that we can provide this better service or increase
these opening hours, or whatever. The implicit threat is that if you
don't give us this money, the service will not improve, the hours will
not increase, and the clients will suffer as a consequence.

But that is just not true. We are asking for the money because
we have already decided to provide the additional service. If you don't
give it to us, we will ask someone else. We will keep asking because
we have decided our clients need it and it is the right thing to do.
If you don't provide the money, you may delay the start. How long for?
That depends on how quickly we can raise the funds. There is no way I
can tell what the delay might be.

And if the money doesn't come in, we may decide to go ahead anyway,
and pray that the money comes in before we need it.

I hear people throwing up their hands in horror. That's not financially
responsible, they say. No, it isn't. But we are not running this charity
in order to be financially responsible. We are running it because people
- people like you and me - are searching through dustbins for something
to eat. In England. Today. We are doing it because people like you and
me are dying in squats with needles in their groins. We are doing it
because these people need to know that somebody cares for them. And we
are not going to just sit on our backsides while someone in a comfortable
office decides whether they want to give us some money.

Working with these people is risky. Yes, we do what we can to minimise
the risks. Within reason. But nobody can completely remove the risks of
trying to help chaotic and desperate people. We may run the risk of getting
into debt. But, quite frankly, it is not the most serious of the risks we
take in doing this work.

So, if we are honest: our choice is to do this work. Your choice is
about whether you want to help, to be a part of it, or not. But we plan
to stay open, and we plan to help people whether you support us or not.

And, if you do give some money, there is no way we can tell what your
money achieved. Which of the peas on that plate did your money buy? Did
it buy half an inch of sausage on each plate? Or did it buy
all the peas and all the sausages on some plates but not others? Or did it
instead buy the replacement toaster and several hours' worth of electricity?
Does it matter whether the money came from you or from someone else
to buy this person's meal, or the time required to get that person into
rehab? What matters is that the money was available - and the people were
there - to do the feeding and to provide the assistance.

Again, if I am to be honest, all I can say is that with all the funding
we received, this is what was achieved. All these people were welcomed,
fed, listened to... We helped these people find somewhere to live, or
a job, or some furniture. And so on. And, if you gave us some money, or
if you volunteered with us, you contributed to making this happen.

Of course, there is the occasional bit of restricted funds: we get money
to buy a replacement fridge or a new computer for the training program,
so we use the money for that purpose. But most of the money we receive goes
towards the running costs of the charity: salaries, electricity, insurance.
They are all essential, because we don't have money to spend on
non-essential items.

So every penny we receive makes a difference, and every penny contributes
to everything we achieve. The money goes towards rebuilding broken lives.
What better investment could you possibly make?

We can count the meals we serve. But we can't measure the love shown,
the dignity with with people are treated, or the respect and understanding
that is demonstrated - sometimes under almost impossible conditions. You
can't measure the value of the testimony of a volunteer who is an ex-client,
who knows what it is like to sleep rough and to lie and cheat and steal
to get the money to fund a habit - but who is now housed and sober
and stable and enjoying life, and who can say with total conviction, "If I
can do it, so can you."

I understand that people want to know what difference their money
made. But you have to understand that it does not work that way. Much
of what we do seems to be wasted. But by 'wasting' our time on some
people, we get to meet others who want to be helped. And, sometimes,
the seemingly wasted time bears fruit months or years later. If you
sow seeds of kindness, you never know which ones will one day take root.

And, if you
believe with us that showing love is never a waste of time, then you
can understand that the bits of the work we can measure are only
worth doing because of the bits we can't measure. Feeding hungry people
is easy. But it is only worth doing, in the long run, if you do it
with respect. And, if you want it to be life-transforming, you have to
be motivated, not by the desire to fulfil a contractual obligation, but
by love for the people whose lives you are touching.